


The Advisor

by AmyNChan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Who gets left behind in a quest by The Chosen One?, aka 'Garrett is a Nice Man', guys like Garrett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 02:04:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17416916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmyNChan/pseuds/AmyNChan
Summary: It's been three years.  He's had distance and time to begin his life anew.  However, the past calls upon him once more.  What is his answer?





	The Advisor

Garrett stooped over his merchandise, organizing it and setting it out in a visually pleasing manner.  In the winter, he had come to sell ornate pottery as the fires kept him warm during the colder nights.  Springtime was the era of pastel paints.  He knew they sold well, especially around the planting celebration.  Summer was the time of crafted fans, iced contraptions, and—for some reason—sunflowers.  Children loved the petals and adults loved the seeds.  Fall was the in-between.  Too soon for winter, too late for summer, and the old pastels had dulled into rusted colors of their once glorious selves.  It was an eclectic season, and it was the time he loved the most.  He got to make use of every single thing he had made, conjured, or bought.

His store had been running for two years, and he even longer than that.  He’d lived a long life, one of daring and intrigue.  The children of the village loved to hear his tales of danger and he loved to tell them of the more mild adventures he’d had.  The adults often came to him for advice on the simplest matters.  How to seal a pipe, what to do about a business transaction, how to tell who to trust.  These were lessons he gladly gave to those who were willing to listen.

For he knew better than to offer pearls of wisdom to swine.

Still, the town was gladder for his presence.  And he was gladder to be a part of it.  He had arrived years ago, as the corpses of autumn leaves crunched helplessly beneath his angered gait, embittered.  He had arrived bearing a gaping, seething, and infected wound within him.  But being in this town, helping, using his gifts to suit his own purposes and sell that which he wanted when he wanted…  it had helped him to heal.

“Gar!”

The man turned his head slowly to the doorway, an easy smile on his face.  “Dwayne, my boy.  Have you come to fetch your colors?”

“They’re not _my_ colors.”  The boy’s clarification wasn’t necessary, but the man let him continue nonetheless.  “They’re _my mother’s_ colors.  She wants to put them on the walk.”

“Of course, of course.”  Garrett chuckled as he rose to his feet.  Dwayne walked into the shop and made straight for the jugs of last winter.  The boy made a funny face, mimicking the jug that hung from the ceiling.  “Careful not to strain your face for too long.  You’ll remain that way for the rest of your days.”

“Nu-uh.  Andrews said that’s a lie.”

“Did he now?”

“Yeah, and he said you never really slayed a dragon before either.”

“Oh?” asked the elder, reaching for the reds.  They had once been a vibrant pink.  “And upon what basis does Andrews have to doubt my word?”

“He said that if you really _did_ slay a dragon, you would have kept your sword.”

Garrett chuckled.  Young boys and their ideas.  “Indeed?”

“Yeah.  You can’t give up your dragon-slaying sword—that’s against the rules.”  Dwayne hopped up to the counter to watch Garret pull down the yellows next.  “When I slay a dragon, I’ll never give up my dragon-slaying sword.  Never.”

“You want to slay a dragon?” asked the old man.  He’d seen and heard enough young boys come through his shop with similar claims that he did not worry as much anymore.  “They’re formidable creatures.”  Still, a word or two of advice could hardly do him much wrong now.

“I don’t care!” said Dwayne, a look of determination on his young face.  Garrett studied it carefully.  “One day, I’m going to be the biggest, baddest dragon slayer around!  I’ll show them who’s boss and then I’ll have a real dragon-slaying sword!”

Garrett hummed thoughtfully.  The dreams and aspirations of young ones often faded easily enough with time, but he also knew just how headstrong and willed the hearts of the young could be.  Dismiss a dream too heartily and they would grow to fulfill it out of spite.  And spite is the least reason as to why anyone should pursue such a dangerous career.

He would know.

“A word to the wise, my boy,” said the man as he pulled a dull burnt orange to the forefront.  “The slayers of dragons are often brave and headstrong, this is true, but they must also be cautious and open to advice and criticism.  To gamble is not to win if you care not what you lose along the path to victory.”

Garrett pulled the colors together, ensuring he had the right amount of each for Dwayne’s mother.  She ordered roughly the same every year, each time painting a different thing.  Roof, walls, carriage, the paints always went somewhere.  The elderly suspected it was her way of doing something with her son, who was growing every year.  This was his ninth fall.

And his young mind was still processing the elder’s words of wisdom when Garrett brought the total to his attention.

“I don’t get it,” stated Dwayne as he handed over a few coins.

Garret chuckled as he made change.  “A lesson learned is soon returned; a lesson liv’d is wisdom giv’d.”

“Does that mean you won’t just tell me what it means?”

“That’s exactly what it means, my boy.”

The youth groaned loudly at the elder’s mirth.  It wasn’t the shopkeeper’s fault that young minds made his life far more entertaining.  But with a transference of paints and a brief farewell, the old man was left to tend to his shop once more.  He wondered how long it would be before Dwayne either figured out the puzzle or gave up on it entirely.  Sometimes it was difficult to gauge just how interested children were in such things.

The door opened once more and Garrett chuckled.  “Have you come back to—oh.”

The mirth in Garrett’s eyes instantly cooled to a hard glint and his back straightened as it used to so many years ago.  His mouth was set in a firm line, betraying neither acceptance nor rejection nor joy nor anger.  An invisible weight of a belt settled around his waist, the ghost of a sword pressing against his thigh.  Though his blood remained cool of old age, the whispers of past mistakes, past silences, past grievances breathed against his neck.

He nodded respectfully as he entered the premises, two faces beside him that Garrett did not recognize.  They must have been to replace…

Well, a lot of time had passed since then.

“Advisor Tr—”

“Don’t.”

The men were at a standstill, one of them looking distinctly uncomfortable.  Garrett could not help but feel a little vindicated at this.  Awkwardly, his unwanted guest resumed.

“You look well.”

“I am.”  There was no thanks, only the barest of civil courtesies.  Had this man entered a year ago, Garrett would have thrown him out on sight.  Now he was a year older, twice as tired, and reaping the benefits of distance from the pain.  “Now what do you want?”

“I want you back on my team.”

If there was only one thing Garrett could respect about the request, it was the bluntness with which it was delivered.

“No.”

It didn’t change his answer, though.

The guards on either side—Garrett wasn’t sure if these were new friends or simply hired hands and, to be quite frank, it didn’t matter since they would probably share the same fate anyways—seemed appalled that someone could refuse their master’s request.  Master, leader, bender of wills, they all had the same meaning when it came to this man.  No, this child.  Even after time had done her work to both of them, he could not have reached half of Garrett’s age.

“Please reconsider.”

He had learned manners, at least.

“No.”

But his answer would not be swayed.

“Why won’t you help us?” one of the guards finally asked.  Garrett turned to him.  A youth—no more than nineteen—with confused eyes and a frown that would have tugged on hearts less wizened than his.  “Surely you know what we’re up against, what our cause is.”

“I do.  As did our friends.  Tell me, have you ever asked your commander what he’s willing to sacrifice for your cause?”

“We never had to,” interjected the other, leaping to his leader’s defense.  “He’s said it—proved it—on numerous occasions.  He’s willing to sacrifice everything that everyone may be free.”

“Truly,” stated Garrett.  He looked from one youth to another to the final in the middle.  He did not raise a hand to defend himself against Garrett’s implied accusation.  He looked at the guards again.  “Tell me, why do you follow him?”

“He was chosen,” said the first simply.  “And I have my personal reasons for fighting.”

“He has led before,” added the second.  “And has shown his great strength.”

“Indeed.  Tell me, is he strong enough to endure a mother’s wrath?”

The two seemed confused.  And Garrett supposed they had every right to be confused.  What, with their inexperience, he supposed that it would be far more physically draining to battle the beasts of legend, to grapple with giants, to wage war with wyrms than to face one angry mother.  He wondered what other follies they existed under to serve this child.

“Has he ever felt the blows of a mother?  The banging of her feeble hands against his torso as she demands that he bring back her now-dead child?  Has he held out his arm as she finally collapses an hour later, her child’s name only a breath on her exhausted lips?  Has he seen her tears, knowing that each one is for a babe that she will see no more?  Has he endured this with the knowledge that he could have saved him?

“Or perhaps,” now Garrett turned to the other, his eyes impressing the seriousness of the topic upon the new lackeys.  “Has he chanced upon the slums of Gatsby?  Has he gone looking for it, for anyone who might care that one of their community will never return?  Has he perhaps found the little boy who had a pile of letters saved for his friend to read upon her arrival?  Did you know that the child can’t even read yet?  Was your leader strong enough to hold him as he fell apart and cried in his lap?  Did your leader have the strength to escape the ghetto on winged feet because he made their youngest cry with obvious falsehoods?”

Garrett allowed the hypotheticals to settle in for these people.  He surveyed one, and then the next.  He wondered if his words would cast their leader in a different light.  He hoped they would.

His attention turned to their leader, who stood before judgement with a slightly pallid face and hard-set eyes.  Garrett knew this tactic.  And it disgusted him.

“Of course you haven’t.  Your mission has always been too _important_ for such trifles.  Your time was much too valuable to see the consequences of your actions, much less embrace them.  Have you even thought of Krantt since he died?  Of Alison?  Have you thought about what their permanent absence has done to the families they had to leave behind for you and your mission?  You say you’re willing to sacrifice everything, but not everything is yours to sacrifice.”

“You were there,” he accused, his voice soft.  The threatening undertones might have once awed Garrett.  No more.  “You saw what needed to be done.”

“Saw?” scoffed Garrett.  “And what, exactly, did you think I saw?  No, don’t answer with your delusions; I’ll tell you what I saw.  I saw an inept child gamble with the lives of the people who trusted him.  I saw a bastard ‘chosen one’ make a choice that got the followers he called friends kill—”

“They knew the risks!” seethed the child in the shop.  His guardsmen stood at the ready with their weapons, but Garrett knew they would not attack unless physically provoked.  And he had no intention of unleashing magic today.  “They were fully aware—”

“They were _children_!” hissed Garrett.  “And _you_ led them to slaughter!”

His words struck an obvious nerve.  Garrett watched as his face contorted in barely concealed rage.  “That’s not fair.  They agreed—”

“Bullshit, no one _agreed_ to anything.  And before you say anything, no, they didn’t.  You told everyone what _you_ decided.  You told us that we were free to leave if we didn’t like it and everyone who stayed with you was expected to fall in line on an _unnecessary suicide mission_.”  Garrett hissed out the poisonous words with no regrets.  It wasn’t his shocked face that made him relieved, but the fact that he said what he’d needed to say to the man that deserved to hear it.  The dregs of anger cooled within him, the terrible secret finally aired out.  Finally said aloud.  Finally heard by the man who had needed to hear it most.

Garrett felt a strange sense of exhausting irony as he thought upon what had brought the fool to his shop.  A weary sigh escaped him.  “But look at you now, coming back to beg for the advice of the dottering old fool you’ve already ignored.”

The elder waited for the impatient chosen one to attempt a defense.  ‘There was no other way’ or ‘Lives were at stake’ or ‘You didn’t have all the facts then!’.  All lies, of course.  An advisor’s job is to know the facts, to find the best way, and to know exactly what is at stake and when.

But the chosen one merely stood, accepting the scolding that had honestly been a long time coming.  When he next spoke, it was with the same voice that Garrett had heard upon first meeting the boy.  Scared, meek, humble. 

“…I need you on my team.  I can’t do it without you.  I was wrong to ignore your advice.”

The absolution felt like a balm on a healed wound.  An appreciated but ultimately useless gesture.  “Yes, you were.  But you’ll have to do this alone.  I won’t follow you anymore.”

The rejection could not have been made more clear.  Everyone in the room stood in silence.  Two in shock, one shaken, and the final one at peace.

After taking a ragged breath, Garrett’s guest spoke.  “…does any part of you want me to succeed at all?”

Garrett thought about this for a moment, weighing the options.  Of course, he knew what was at stake with his quest and of course he was aware of what the prophecy foretold, but he was also aware of the fact that prophecies were fickle things and rarely told things straight.  If this boy continued on his path, on the path of self-righteous judgement and impatient action, then the only thing that awaited this world was destruction, chaos, ruin, and death.  Being saved by him would not be the idyllic land that many hoped for when they heard the prophecy, and perhaps only a step above being ruled by dragons.  No, he would rather not be saved by this man if he had the choice.

“My hope is that if you don’t, someone more worthy than you will take your place.”

If the chosen one had hoped for reconciliation, it was obvious that he would not find it here.  Garrett carefully surveyed the group before him.  They were children, plain and simple.  And while he knew that they truly wanted his advice now, they would not hesitate to cast his warnings to the side when things got truly dangerous and they needed his words more than ever.  He knew that as keen as they were to listen now, they would only ignore him when another, faster option could be taken to victory.

The memories of Alison and Krantt, of their families, and of the lines that had been overstepped kept Garrett right where he was.  Right where he belonged.  Far away from this boy and his foolhardy quest.

“Leave.  I don’t want you in my store.”

Both guards seemed fit to protest, but their defeated leader raised a hand to halt them.  Garrett could see the glittering shards of fractured hope behind the eyes of the man he had once followed, but respected the fact that the man only nodded and turned away.  No more pushing, no more persuading.  His no was his own and it was final.  Having his word finally, finally respected felt good.

The armed entourage left his store and Garrett could feel his back relax, his tension ease, and the ghost of the sword fade into obscurity.  He breathed deeply.  He let it go.

And then he returned to tending his shop, lighter than he’d felt in three years.


End file.
